Well, three more weeks and it’s Christmas vacation and we’ll all be back in Dunleith and Charles William and Irise will be getting married. The dresses are waiting for us. I hope your diet goes well so you’ll fit in yours. I’m as thin as a rail. I got so I don’t care if I ever eat.

I’m writing this paper on Stevens now. It’s all I can think about. “Among twenty snowy mountains the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.”

Irise and I will be home on the eighteenth. When do you get there? Are you coming on the train? They are going to have lobster for the reception and all the champagne anyone can drink. “Three be the things I shall never obtain. Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”

Hurry home,
Rhoda

Dec. 15, 1955 (unmailed)

Dear Malcolm,

I have tried to write this letter about a hundred times. So this time I will mail whatever I write. I am not writing it of course. I am typing it on my Royal portable typewriter I have had since I was thirteen. I learned how to type in three days. Did I ever tell you that? I am a very smart girl. Did you ever realize that? What do I know? Nothing. “Once a fear pierced him, in that he mistook the shadow of his equipage for blackbirds.”

Dec. 16, 1955 (mailed)

Dear Malcolm,

I am going to mail this no matter what it says. I’m sorry that last weekend was so horrible. I’m sorry I got drunk. I’m sorry that we got into an argument in the motel. I’m sorry it’s so hard to know what to do every day of our lives.

Charles William called me last week and said you were really sorry about all of it too. He said you looked like you were unhappy so that’s why I’m writing to you.

I started menstruating so at least I’m not pregnant. Charles William and Irise are getting married at Christmas. I’m the maid of honor. I guess you know that. I think we’ll really have a great party. I’m helping Irise plan the wedding. Charles William wants everything perfect as you can imagine. Here’s a poem I wrote while looking at the photograph of you Charles William sent me (was that two thousand years ago, turning and turning in a widening gyre) to get me to go with you to Homecoming. Things get started in the world and they seem so fresh and white and hopeful and then they usually end up like this. Well, onward, as they used to say when the wagons headed west.

Yours in the human race,
Rhoda

POEM IN JANUARY

The rain, the rain, is kind to come

It sings its song, dumb, dumb,

It sings that things aren’t what they seem

And love, my love, is still a dream